. Cassell's popular gardening. Gardening. EOCK, ALPINE, FERN, AND WILD aAKDENING. 5 ivholly unnecessary, and generally injurious. The mere fact of its being* utterly unnatural is strong- presumptive evidence against its use, while ex- perience shows that it does far more harm than good. The rage for rough turfy loam, though light in the main, is not seldom carried to extremes in the cultivation of particular plants. For ex- ample, in the cultivation of Alpines the necessity for thorough drainage is so apparent that this object is sought to be obtained through excessive looseness and roughness
. Cassell's popular gardening. Gardening. EOCK, ALPINE, FERN, AND WILD aAKDENING. 5 ivholly unnecessary, and generally injurious. The mere fact of its being* utterly unnatural is strong- presumptive evidence against its use, while ex- perience shows that it does far more harm than good. The rage for rough turfy loam, though light in the main, is not seldom carried to extremes in the cultivation of particular plants. For ex- ample, in the cultivation of Alpines the necessity for thorough drainage is so apparent that this object is sought to be obtained through excessive looseness and roughness of the soil; but any one who has dug up an Alpine plant in its natural habitat must have been struck with two features of its root-run, its hardness and its fineness. The soil is mostly the slow and gradual accretion of ages, formed a few grains" or particles at a time; and timcj the great consolidator, compacts it into hard. A masses. The porosity of the soil is maintained by the addition of rocky debris or other matters—semi- imperishable matter—to it. The same rule should be observed in the artificial formation of root-runs for rock plants. Fresh turfy loam should be laid up for a year or more before use, as fresh vegetable fibre can hardly be at once utilised by the roots. It would also be benefited by one or more turn- ings and by the addition of fifteen per cent, or so of pure silica, or clean sharp silver sand, if not sufficiently sandy; five or so of leaf-mould, sweet and well rotted, and from fifteen to twenty per cent, of smashed stone. The latter is to be preferred to crocks, potsherds, shells, or charcoal. The soil in all cases should be on a layer or base of drainage from two to six or more inches in depth. In cases where plants are grown in pockets in rocks, it is essential to success that these should either be bot- tomless, or have one or more free outlets from their lower sides or bottoms, for it cannot be too often re- peated that stagnant water means
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade18, booksubjectgardening, bookyear1884
